(Lack of) Service Culture, Internet frustration and Greece

Do not get me wrong, I adore Greece. Right now I am almost half contemplating not bothering returning to the UK at all. But nowhere is perfect and Greece has its faults (as you may have noticed). The deal used to be with Greece that things did not work properly/the food might have been a bit rough (though that has its charms), etc but it was very cheap. Then Greece joined the Euro and so now you suffer the downside but it costs you more.

My frustration of the day has been with the internet. My room does not have a connection to WiFi. The hotel explains that this is to protect guests from radiation. Er… right. And so while I can write offline in my room to send over copy I must go either to reception or to a cafe up the road. Each has its own distinct drawback.

At the former the connection goes now and again but there is always power. I tried to load after breakfast (muesli and semi skimmed milk natch) but the connection was down. The fat woman behind the desk said “it was working earlier.” I said it was not last night which she first denied but then realised that since she had not been on duty at the time and that she knew perfectly well that the hotel has been offline for 24 hours since her last shift, I might call her bluff. But there was no hint of apology and there has been no urgency at the hotel to fix a problem which has also stopped it taking bookings by email. Heck the economy is going so well, let’s turn business away right? What does it matter?

And so I am sitting in the cafe which stays open from 7 am to 3 PM allowing me to write whenever I want. Its wi-fi link is perfect. The problem here is that the electricity cuts out about 20 times a day, forcing me to constantly save work but knowing that I will occasionally lose some funny line that I am unable to remember later. When the power goes a Greek bird scuttles off flicks a switch and it comes back in a couple of minutes. The pretence is that this is a one-off or is just happening today. But being a regular I know that it happens every day. If I was running a cafe serving meat that needs chilling I would have some concerns about this issue and would get it fixed asap. But this being Greece it just does not happen. I stick to salads anyway so what do I care if this place poisons its other customers with dodgy souvlaki?

It is all part of the way of life here. I remember as a child that we were all here and tried to make a phone call back home from a remote mountain village (Anelion). After lengthy frustration we asked my father “are you sure you know how the Greek telephone system works?” Quick as a flash he replied “I know perfectly well how it works. It doesn’t.” Boom. Boom. It does not stop me loving the place, you just know that things don’t always work and having accepted that as being a way of life, when things fail it is not actually that stressful.